Motion training is taught daily to millions of people. The methods most often employed rely on an instructor verbally directing a student to recognize the desired positions and sequencing of the motion strictly by feel and through the comments of the instructor. For the average person, this process can be difficult and is often unrewarding.
In order to improve performance, athletes in sports and participants in recreational activities often concentrate on improving their skills through repetitive practice. A number of devices for the repetitive practice of an athletic movement or action have been developed. Examples of these devices include batting practice machines for baseball, ball serving machines for tennis, and ball return putting targets and swing trainers for golf. These are just a few examples of the literally hundreds of practice devices which have been developed to improve a participant's skills.
A number of these practice devices use a visual system that provides overlays by superimposing two recorded video representations of the same activity. Such systems are shown, for example, in Michaels et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,015,344, Haas et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,137,566, McCullough et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,408,750, and Seidel et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,828,500.
These references make use of a directly recorded image of an instructor, such as on video tape, taken while the instructor is performing a particular motion technique. The student is provided with a means of overlaying an image of his own recorded technique against that of the instructor in order to determine what deviations exist. These systems, however, are not interactive and do not provide instantaneous feedback. Only after the student has completed practicing the technique is a comparison made to the instructor's video form.
These systems are also difficult to use and to calibrate. Because of the different sizes and positions of the images, it is hard to exactly overlay the two images. Further, the two images are time based. That is, because they are dynamic representations of the sports activity, in order to be useful to the student the movements must take place at the same relative time. Synchronizing the recorded images of the instructor and student to start and proceed through the motion at the same pace requires expensive editing which alters the natural pace of either the instructor's or student's motion, decreasing its teaching value.
Another type of system is shown in Mann, U.S. Pat. No. 4,891,748 which generates an image model representing the cumulative technique of several golf instructors. The image is scaled, by the computer, to the size of the student's image and is available in ten key positions at intervals through the golf swing. The computer brings up a static display for the student to reach and be placed in a stationary position to demonstrate the feel of the position. The composite image eliminates the poor movement patterns that elite performers display and does not demonstrate the tempo and rhythm of their motion. The Mann disclosure also uses a live teacher's assistance in digitizing the student's image and emphasizes the verbal directives of a teacher to the student.
Still another system shown in O'Leary et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,249,967 uses a video overlay generator to produce a static image representing the dynamic technique of a master and overlays the live image of the student for a simultaneous display on a visual monitor. The system is specifically designed not to force the student to keep pace with a moving image of the master. Precision of position, and not pace, is the focus of this method. Only the positions of the body's extremities can be examined and emulated with this method. The O'Leary disclosure ignores centers of body movement such as the large muscle groups in the legs and torso.
Another problem with the prior art methods of teaching sport skills is that there is no standardization in the technique which is taught or of methodology used to teach the technique. Several of these prior art methods use an artificially-created, "composite" or "average" training motion to provide standardization. However, this ideal motion simply embodies one person's subjective interpretation of what motion is ideal. Furthermore, every top performer has a technique which he or she uses personally to achieve their level of proficiency in the sport and is adapted to his or her specific gender, size, and weight. Adjusting one ideal motion to students of varying size and weight for the sake of standardization only further distorts the artificial ideal motion from the real motion of a top performer.
Thus, a need exists for a simple, inexpensive and easy-to-use motion training system which allows the student, with or without an instructor, to practice a selected motion by comparing him or herself in real time against a moving top performer of the motion having the same gender and approximately the same age and body type as the student. Preferably, the student would observe the top performer at the pace that the motion is normally performed. A customized presentation of referential graphics would guide the student through the correct positions of the activity which are in many cases never achieved after years of traditional instruction.